Global Warming and CO2 Emissions

Some readers have asked why resistir.info has given so much emphasis to exposing that legendary global warming, which would be a problem seemingly esoteric and far from the objectives of this website. Some have even said that such an accusation would deviate from the “Left” political position because progressive publications and personalities (such as Monthly Review and Fidel Castro) have expressed concern for global warming. For this reason, some clarifying is in need to establish some facts and make them clear.

Let us begin with some facts we think are established:

1) Carbon dioxide is neither toxic, nor a pollutant. Its emission is an inevitable and necessary result of any combustion with composites of carbon (oil refined, coals, natural gas, etc). It is also an essential gas to life on earth because when they breathe, all living beings inhale a mixture of oxygen and CO2, and then exhale the latter.

2) There is no evidence that CO2 emissions of anthropogenic origin (i.e., man-made, which excludes all other natural emissions of this gas) have any significant effect on global warming. Many scientists consider that the human contribution to global CO2 emissions occurring on the planet is absolutely negligible.

3) Empirical data has shown that the renowned global warming foreseen by computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has not been happening since 1998. So, opportunistically, they have changed the expression “global warming” – which no longer corresponded to the factual truth – to the more ambiguous term of “climate change” (which always existed throughout the history of the Earth).

4) Computer models are themselves unreliable. The modelling theory tells us that, to be useful, models should be relatively simple, with a limited number of variables. Trying to apply modelling to the climate is a pathless effort because then the number of variables (and the assumptions that have to be made) is huge. In climatology, little use can be obtained from computer modelling, no matter how powerful the computers may be (although the same does not apply to the weather forecast).

5) It becomes even worse if a bad method such as computer modelling is based on an obsolete theory. This is precisely what is happening with the climatologic models used by IPCC, designed in the early twentieth century (thus, before the existence of Meteorological Satellites). The modern climatologic theory was established by the great French scientist Marcel Leroux (1938-2008), from the Université Jean Moulin in Lyon. Professor Marcel Leroux’s opinion about this supposed warming is summarized in his article “A scientific sham “: http://www.revuefusion.com/images/Art_095_36.pdf (French) http://resistir.info/climatologia/impostura_cientifica.html (Portuguese)

6) The IPCC is not an organization of scientists but of bureaucrats appointed by governments and usually well-paid. It is a lie that the IPCC has three thousand scientists specialized in climate, as has been so often proclaimed. And it is also a lie to say that there is a “scientific consensus” in regard to the heating dogma.

7) It would not be bad for mankind if there was some degree of global warming on Earth. Many regions of the world would start having fruitful farming. Greenland, for example – the “Green Earth” as the Vikings called it – had agriculture in the Medieval Warm Period. One might even say that the cradle of Western civilization on Earth was in an extremely warm climates: Mesopotamia (now Iraq) between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Egyptian and Aztec civilizations flourished in warm climates.

But why should we worry about such issues, which are mostly of a strictly scientific agenda? Because based on the theoretical and practical mistakes of the IPCC, a huge global hysteria has spread which has influenced politicians around the world and has led to opportunism and ignorance. Al Gore (Vice President of the United States during the Clinton administration) contributed to this process. His book and movie “An Inconvenient Truth” actively promoted “climate terrorism”. Instilling fear in order to sell the solution has often been used. This case is no exception, because Gore and others invented the new business of selling the rights to carbon emissions – and Wall Street bankers obviously rejoiced. Some people became specialists in these crazy doomsday predictions. Such is the case, for example, of Mr James Hansen, the father of all this, who even talks about rising sea levels in terms of dozens of metres.

Moreover, the absurd intensity of publicity given to the false problem of global warming and of the devilish CO2 has triggered a chain of problems, all of them somewhat interrelated. The first is to divert attention from the really important issues. And above all the most important of our era, one which will affect our evolution and have harsh consequences in our future way of life: the reaching of peak oil. This fact is systematically silenced by the so-called “reference” media and ignored by politicians whose time horizon does not go beyond four years (for this matter one can take into consideration the current Portuguese government which is conspiring with bankers in order to build a new airport in the country at the exact moment when a stagnation/decline in air transport is made public).

The second problem is the embezzlement of financial and human resources caused around the world by the global warming fake scientific consensus. Imagine the amount of actions that could have taken place with the money spent on conferences such as the ones in Bali and in Copenhagen in 2009! This is true also for Portugal, where Mr Socrates’s government has poured lots of money into organizations such as SIAM I, SIAM II NCCP, CAC, FPC, consulting firms and many others created ad hoc. An industry of global warming has been set up.

Thirdly, there is a deformation of the energy policies, from the moment they were attached to the climate myth. Consider, for example, the fact that the EU imposes restrictions on CO2 emissions in cars manufactured in Europe today. That is, instead of setting minimum levels of income for the engines or imposing restrictions on really pollutant emissions (for example, SO2, nitrogen oxides, solid particles, etc.), the restriction is imposed on a non-polluting gas. That is, once again, an example of systematic confusion between the environment and climate, in which the first is damaged without any benefit to the second.

Fourth, all this immense global hysteria – that will culminate on 7 December, at the Conference of Copenhagen – is a defeat for science. The public scepticism that this can cause is an unprecedented crime in the history of scientific thought. We are not taking into consideration only the recent scandal with the British and American researchers who lied about statistics and criticized their colleagues in peer reviews, the Climategate. It is much more than that: it is a possible demoralization of science in general, as such, paving the way for the irrationalism. A ridiculous example of this is that in Portugal a study was carried out to fight “climate change” at municipal level (!).

In fifth place is the deformation of the energy policies of many countries. This is visible in Portugal, where governments have encouraged and subsidized irrational solutions in economic and energetic terms, based on the fallacy of global warming and the ill-fated CO2 emissions. Just remember, for example, the unfortunate policy of subsidies on liquid biofuels and, more recently, electric vehicles (when Portugal is a net importer of kilowatt-hour); not supporting possible good solutions in transports (such as natural gas vehicles, which can use biomethane, compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas); the ruinous promotion of the so-called renewable energies at the expense of tariff equalization subsidies, etc., etc.. The (deliberate?) ignorance of Peak Oil and the fallacy of the Kyoto Protocol lead to such aberrations. We live in a time when energy planning should be used to promote an “escape” from oil, as quickly as possible. Farsighted governments such as in Sweden have discovered what the Portuguese have not. But the mistakes of today will be paid tomorrow – and the price can be expensive.

Finally, there is the curious claim that the position of resistir.info in not a “left” political position. However, scientific issues are not “left” or “right” because what must prevail is the search for the truth. Science is also achieved by trial and error. A scientific theory that was valid at one time (as the climatology theories developed in the early twentieth century) can and should be subject to criticism and overcome by a better one (as Marcel Leroux did). There is no “left” or “right” climate, for the same reason that neither physics nor mathematics deserve these epithets. But the insistence on applying an already expired theory when there is a new and better one and with more explanatory power is certainly a reactionary stance.

It is only natural that those whose scientific beliefs conform to their personal interests (jobs, business of carbon finance, financing, etc) insist in applying the old theory. But it is less understandable that progressive personalities and publications, perhaps due to ignorance, still rely on this theory. It is possible that the recent Climategate scandal opens their eyes.

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